True, but that is a self-fulfilling definition. For most people, that advice will work. For the minority for whom it does not work, they have chronic insomnia. It does not invalidate the advice, it just means that some people are out of the norm and need something else.
That being said, I agree with you. We all would be healthier if we'd just sleep when tired, eat when hungry. But that isn't how our society rolls.
My trick is to listen (not watch) to old television shows ...all night. I selected a few hundred hours of old television that'd I'd seen many times before, got a pair of very comfortable ear buds to sleep with, and I just listen to the old TV shows for 8 hours straight. It works amazingly.
Now I sleep through the night, every night, despite having even worse life problems than when I started. One interesting side effect is that I don't dream the same at all. If I dream at all - it's actually about the show that I'm listening to. It doesn't seem to have any negative impact though.
And that adult may not even realize it, because that worry is usually covered by layers of coping. “I’m fine” is adults worst enemy.
My trick is to listen (not watch) to old television shows ...all night
Before using a technique described in itt’s root comment, I also used for-sleep hour+ long asmr videos. Cannot compare their effectiveness because I don’t have a tv.
If I dream at all - it's actually about the show that I'm listening to. It doesn't seem to have any negative impact though
Make sure they don’t broadcast red propaganda in the middle of the night! /jk
Being a very anxious person in nature, I will add there is something that positively helps anxiety in repetition of something known.
I can't put my finger on it but, I always feel aliviated when a new episode starts after the previous one. It's one of the things that has helped me most during hard times, and gave me back being able to fall sleep at night.
For the general issue of worries keep me up at night, I have found that after a few years of meditation, this has almost stopped being issue for me. Maybe if there is some big issue I will wake up one morning early and not be able to stop the thoughts from waking me, so then I bring my problem solving techniques to it and resume sleeping well. Granted some types of stress, financial, child well being, relationship, are more destabilizing and force a higher level of practice than others (like a recent car accident where no one was hurt but my pride and my car and maybe my trust of highway 87). But three slow deep breaths, with all my attention I can summon, note the beginning of the pause and plan reflex, and then nicely numbered breaths, connected to many hours of sitting meditation and those basically chill experiences, and I can let sleepiness do its thing without fuss.
It has absolutely changed the way I sleep (combined with not having caffeine with dinner or later). It has to be TV shows that I've either seen before or don't really care about what happens. Only difference is I use the sleep timer and just turn the TV back on if I have trouble falling back asleep.
But I am with you, old tv shows where I already know the ending are distracting enough not to think about tomorrow, but since I've seen them already I don't stay awake to find out what happens
...but it also cannot be the same content every night, so I have a few hundred hours of several old shows hosted on my Plex server that I play each night.
It's novel enough that it keeps my brain occupied, but not so new that I care about missing anything.
It's a nice sweet spot.
My next step is selecting very specific episodes that I think have good stories that I actually want to reinforce. I find I really internalize certain scenes if I happen to be in the correct part of my sleep cycle while it's playing.
Of the latter, I prefer the shows I’ve been listening to for over a decade.
The latest gen don't work as well (for sleep) as their shape is slightly different (more "bulbous" perhaps) and are much more uncomfortable to fall asleep with in my opinion.
As to how wise it is to sleep with tiny bluetooth transmitters inside your skull... that's a different question.
Given that situation or any other possible emergency that may occur in the middle of the night, sleeping with earbuds playing old TV shows seems like a very bad idea...
Be careful.
Last year, at the beginning of the pandemic, our whole family basically went with no alarms or bedtimes. We slept when we were tired, we ate when we were hungry.
We all basically ended up going to bed between 2-4am (including the 3 and 5 year old) and waking around 11am. Sometimes we would take naps too.
The only reason we got away with that of course was because the pandemic had removed all requirements to interact with society. We literally had no where to go and no one to meet with (all my work meetings start after 1pm).
It was amazing and glorious.
Subjectively, i feel like this is really hard to actually get right in practice.
During the pandemic i had decided to only go to sleep when i actually felt tired. Unfortunately, usually that ended up being at around 2 AM, possibly because using a computer in the evenings/nights was pretty bad for me being able to "listen" to the needs of my body. I noticed that i felt much worse when waking up, than i did when i was following a set schedule. Even with solutions like Redshift/f.lux, people probably still shouldn't use computers and possibly not partake in other activities in the late hours of the night, should they want to better gauge when they are actually tired and when it's time to sleep.
In regards to food and nutrition, it was also a similar situation. For a while, i decided to eat as much as i wanted when i felt hungry. Even though i didn't ever order take out, didn't drink things like Cola/Pepsi, kept myself hydrated to the best of my abilities, i still probably ate too much and that resulted in me gaining about 10-20 kg of weight in total, over a number of months (towards the upper end of a healthy BMI, bordering being overweight). It could have been worse, but if you want to consume food freely, it should probably be mostly veggies or nature products, as opposed to many of the comfort foods.
Now i'm mostly back to a set sleep schedule, limiting what i eat so that i feel a little bit hungry when i go to sleep and also doing cardio exercise every day regardless of how i feel when doing it (which has consistently been pretty horrible so far) and overall my wellbeing has gradually increased.
tl;dr - Understanding the needs of your body can be hard. I certainly cannot trust mine in that regard.
But understanding the causes helps. There's a bunch of things I simply don't do:
1) late night working. I can't get any sleep after that. My brain being hyperactive before bed time kills my productivity the next day. So it's a net loss. I'd rather wake up early than work late.
2) caffeine takes a long time to leave your body. I don't drink coffee after noon. Or tea. Or anything containing it. I also limit my intake to max 2-3 cups per day. I avoid the stuff entirely on weekends and try to not get too dependent on it. A nice side effect is that when I do drink coffee, it really works.
3) I don't work on the weekend. I need my weekends to reset my brain. Sleep is part of that. Not thinking about work for 2 days a week is part of that. Context switches are great for getting work out of your short term memory. I don't want to feel guilty about not working; so it's a rule I very break. It can wait and if it can't, it will have to anyway.
4) I don't set alarm clocks. I stopped doing this years ago and I wake up when I need to. It's uncanny; the rare times I do set an alarm clock because I need to be up extremely early, I actually wake up just before it goes off. Mostly on normal days I wake up around the time I would have set my alarm anyway; or slightly before that. In the rare case I don't, I apparently needed some extra sleep and its fine. Finishing your natural sleep cycle is more important than getting out of bed 20 minutes too early. I never miss meetings or get late to work (well working from home like everyone these days).
In the 1990's medicinal herbs became popular and easy to get, including sleep aids. I discovered rather by accident that if I took melatonin or valerian right before going to bed, then popped a caffeine pill immediately upon waking up, I felt normal and productive during the day, even with only sixish hours of sleep. I started doing that routinely during the work week. Changed my life.
My sleep rhythms finally adjusted after about ten years of doing this, so I can now go to bed at 11pm-12 and wake up like a normal person in the morning without the aid of the herbs or the caffeine.
The other thing that seems to have helped me has been allowing natural light into my bedroom. I used to black out my windows and sleep in, then wake up disoriented since my bedroom was pitch black. Now, the sunrise wakes me up on the morning and I'm guessing that helps with circadian rhythm.
It's still not perfect. If I have the slightest bit of anxiety I'll wake up in the middle of the night, and in general if I wake up at night I have trouble falling asleep again. But that's a far cry from my college insomnia.
Of course I will have trouble if I have too much coffee.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-24-hour_sleep%E2%80%93wake...
For me actually following sleep experts advice helped. Particularly, CBT-I. The idea is very simple. Two important sleep factors are what your brain is used to and how tired you are. If your brain is used to wake up in the middle of the night, you can possibly change it by making yourself very tired. You start by picking a consistent sleep window that works for you. Let's assume you get 7 hours of sleep but need to spend 9 hours in bed for that. You pick a 7 hours window (e.g., 11p - 6am) and you put an alarm clock and get up regardless if you're tired or not. In the beginning you're going to wake up in the middle of the night and be very tired in the morning, but ideally after some time you'll be tired enough and sleep through the night. This sleep restriction practice can be dangerous of course, and it's not recommended unless you can get at least 5 hours of sleep each night.
Over time you can adjust your sleep window as needed. The key is to stick to your sleep routine, following all sleep hygiene tips, and maybe most importantly waking up every day at the same time even if you went to bed later than your usual bed time. That's why I still use an alarm clock even though I don't need to and some research suggest it's better to wake up naturally. So far it's been working for me, might not work for others.
Another tip I have is meditation. Other already mentioned they listen to stuff like audio books etc. When I cannot fall a sleep I would usually listen to some sleep meditation with a sleep eye mask. It works better for me than what most sleep experts recommend - leaving bed and reading book or something like that.
I did this for years. Felt great for a while, then starting having noticeable impacts on my ability to focus, my mood, and my physical health.
The same old advice took close to 6 months to really start helping me. It was an absolute grind to stick to a wake + bedtime routine. The discipline it takes is absolutely insane (weekends were the hardest). I stopped and started over and over and over again, but eventually stuck to it.
Low/medium dose ambien once or twice a week was the the thing that really got me into the habit/routine. Medication is not a long term fix (especially this stuff), but this was enough to get me through the fitful nights for a few months--it stopped me from getting out bed and breaking the routine.
Anecdote, so as usual, ymmv.
Excerpt from the linked article:
Don’t force yourself into a consistent bedtime. A regular bedtime is great if you’re sleeping well. But if you can’t fall asleep, trying to force it will only make things worse.I guess I have to praise the sun more often.
I did all the lifestyle changes. Then I got diagnosed. The drugs work. Nothing else besides low carb eating did before that.
Two weeks after being put on Lipitor I began to suffer chronic insomnia for the first time in my life: I had good sleep hygiene (almost perfect), consistent exercise, and minimal caffeine (only in the morning, only before 9am).
The problem lay in my body chemistry: insomnia was not an uncommon side effect of Lipitor. The fix? My doctor swapped out Lipitor for a different statin.
I'd say sleep hygiene is necessary but not sufficient. I'm guessing you are aware of the reddit forums for N24/DSPS,that are also pretty intolerant of sleep hygiene talk. But the part about getting up after 30 minutes or so to start over is definitely very helpful for me.
For me, meditation also helps a lot, which I think suggests my main problem is anxiety/stress.
Most likely there are antagonists at play delaying your onset. Often either sleeping in late / excess time in bed, or anxiety, or blue light emitting electronics before bed.
I also have had a lot of success with podcasts to fall asleep.
Before this I’d often be awake until 1-3 am. It was terrible.
It sucks it didn’t work for you, but am chiming in to say for others that if you really try sleep hygiene and tinker with it, it may well work.
We have an informal policy of not scheduling meetings before 11 AM, so even when I don't get to sleep until 3 AM (which is common), I can still get ~8 hours of sleep.
Yes!
People have different circadian rhythms. Also teenagers tend to naturally be night owls. But the world doesn’t care much.
Even having schedule flexibility at work, if you have kids that you need to take to school, then you have to follow their schedule.
Your phrasing makes it sound like people can't help themselves, but thats just wrong. Sleeping habits are actually an issue of discipline unless you're suffering from an actual medical condition... Which are extremely rare
Either start working out/do cardio or reduce your sleeping time until you're able to go to sleep at the time you wish.
some things are actually controllable if the person in question cared enough to actually learn about themselves.
It is scientifically recognized that people have different circadian rhythms (thus sleep cycles).
And here’s some research about teenage delayed circadian rhythm: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2820578/
You know, sometimes people are not snowflakes that require bullying or discipline to do things “the right way”.
Btw, do you have any references for your claim that most sedentary people will become night owls if they don’t pay attention? Or is it just your own personal perspective?
There are people that suffer from this self afflicted syndrome and it's not easy to change your lifestyle into a healthy one. Hiding behind words like night owl doesn't help you if you want to change yourself however.
And if you don't want to change yourself, then just admit to yourself that this is the lifestyle you want to have.
There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to stay up late/sleep in. It is however a decision you make and not a biological necessity.
Not sure why you are attacking me, and I never said I was a night owl or that I wanted to change myself.
Anyway, if you consider genetic predispositions or adolescence to be “self afflicted syndromes”, then either there’s a language barrier or you just will never accept something that it’s not your own opinion, even if there’s scientific research showing you otherwise (maybe you didn’t read it? If so, then I suggest you do).
Obesity exists as well and is usually caused by the lifestyle of the afflicted. The same applies here.
I'm sorry for my phrasing however, there is a language barrier as you've correctly pointed out and I was using the "you" as a generic term for people identify with that.
You do realize that these are different things I hope?
If not, here is a hint: a "night owl" has no trouble falling asleep when it's "their time" to sleep.
A person suffering from insomnia still struggles to fall asleep even if it's 2am.
My body/brain simply will not allow me to sleep longer than 6.5 hours and that is often really pushing it.
I have absolutely no signs of sleep deprivation. No daytime sleepiness. Every article loves to tell me how horrible it is for me, but there are no symptoms and nothing more I can do.
Sleep duration is just a single metric; apnea, REM+NREM3 duration etc. all matter. You may be getting as much REM+NREM3 in 6.5 as someone gets in 8... and if you don't have apnea, you might get WAY more actual sleep than most people.
I went through a period where I believed my body would only accommodate a certain amount of sleep. Once I stopped caring about sleep duration... that duration slowly increased to eventually revert to 'normal'.
The key is to just _stop_caring_ about it. Do everything right, and let your body/mind handle the rest. It doesn't happen overnight.
I agree with this. Worrying about the quality of my sleep caused me more sleep problems than it solved. I quit tracking my sleep, I go to bed when I'm tired and get out of bed when I wake up. E.g. I don't try to keep sleeping just because it's 4AM. My sleep quality has steadily improved as a result. Just roll with it.
I have however found that being a bit short on sleep one night and making it up another works perfectly fine if your weekly average comes out ok. Another thing all the sleep articles claims isn’t possible.
Notwithstanding everything else you said, you don't know that for a fact. Some unlikely interventions can have a massive impact. Even if you're content with your sleep it doesn't mean it can't be improved.